Chronology: '39
by WeimarWeeb
Summary: Inspired by Marvels and a love of American Urban History, Chronology will follow the story of Batman from 1939 to the present through first and third person accounts. - The year is 1939, a boom city gone bust in the wake of the great depression begins to rise at the brink of the next great war, Gotham, flooded with paranoia and corruption, faces the beginning of a new kind of fear
1. Chapter 1

**Chronology: '39, Part One.**

* * *

_May 29, 1939_

A long time ago there was a war between the states, so vile that blood spilled unprecedented across fields of grain, so vast that the cities of the south burned so hot that the amber light and ashes illuminated the countryside with such luminescence that as far north as Kane, Philadelphia the farmers could see the distant shimmer of the march. Industry blossomed in the old port cities to feed the machines of slaughter, and with it came new riches, new royalty. This was the story of a dynasty, Wayne & Sons Manufacturing Co., my birthright. Forged in blood and havoc and founded in a city with no dearth of either.

I take this diary to refute it, or perhaps to remind myself why I have become terror, remind myself the legacy of the past. Perhaps through this tome, if the police may find it, or some descendent far down my lineage, I can confess to my secrets, my crimes, my thoughts, absolved by the march of time.

Seventeen years ago my story began on the intersection of Martin and 120th, the Monarch Theatre. My father had commissioned Adolph Zukor to create a palace of the moving picture in the husk of the old Girard Opera House, a gift for me in boundless entertainment, and a gift to my mother in namesake as her passion was the ornate and meticulous lepidoptery collection she had amassed. After months of construction it was opening night, and with the cool breeze of autumn staining all my memories we were off to see Oliver Twist.

For the life of me I cannot remember anything before that night, before that moment, as if that were my true birth, as if the twelve years of my life before then was just prelude, leading inevitably to the moment. I know it is morose to dwell upon such notions, but still I wake with scattered images of that night as if I was still there, and not too infrequently I wonder in waking hours if I am still there. Looking at the pearl grips of the Wayne .38, the white bat stamped on the side in a small circle that is all I can focus on as the shriek becomes muffled by ringing in my ears. I see them lying there, I clutch their hands. I try to think of how I can bring them back, how they're not gone yet, how they can't be gone because we had plans to go to Jordan Park the next morning to watch the rowing team.

Alfred picked me up that night, brought me to my room, read me a story as I silently cried myself to sleep, facing away from him as I drifted away on the tale of Frank Merriwell and his adventures out west.

I wanted to be strong like Frank Merriwell, smart, brave, courageous in the face of danger. My sorrow by morning had festered into hatred, a boyish and impotent rage, at myself for being a cowardly child, at god for his cruelty, at the world which had let this happen. Tonight, I prove myself, tonight I become what I've trained for so long to be. For months now I have been plating leather and lead, building my body to sprint and glide in secret. I will become the bat, reclaim my family legacy. I may very well perish, but I will perish facing what I could not face before.

* * *

_June 2, 1939_

I broke a man's fingers last night. Stomping them with my heel as he lay on the ground. He was trying to steal a Model A by the docks before I tackled him. He shot me three times, each leaving a bruise from my plated armor that now cascades across my shoulder and chest as though a vast continent of shattered veins. So, I just… did it. I didn't want to hurt him; I was only going to cuff him and leave him there for some beat officer to find on his patrol. But in the moment, I was standing over him, crushing his hand, hearing him scream before stuffing his ripped shirt into his mouth… it didn't feel wrong. But now it stings more than any of the shots do.

This morning was the first I appeared in the Gazette, stuffed far back into page 8, behind the news of the royal visit to Metropolis and the mayoral debates, behind the still lukewarm stock prices of Wayne Mechanical. "Masked Man Assaults Vehicle Thief", with less than four sentences describing the situation. Alfred was the one who saw it first, bringing me the clipping with his wry undertone of disapproval. "You might want to stick to page six, Bruce."

As much as I've let Alfred know, and as much as he's supported me through this, it's created this distance between us, a divide that I am unsure how to bridge. Will this happen every night I go out? Will Alfred have to read second hand, third hand the story of how I got gunned down in the middle of Dogtown? Wake up to reporters outside asking how much he knew about this charade?

I have to talk to him later tonight. I can't let him down, knowing what he's done for me, knowing what kind of life he's led. When the Lamberts moved to the lot just adjacent to the Wayne estate, I was much distressed as Horatio had been a damned scoundrel at the preparatory academy. A bully to anyone and everyone who he could sniff out as nouveau riche, a full-fledged villain to anyone who was on scholarship, and a constant voice of haranguing insult and gossip about my own life and circumstances. I was the little orphan boy for Horatio Lambert to focus his torments upon. It became so much that I had to tell Alfred the truth, that I wanted to rent a place, wanted to leave because Horatio was simply going to make my life more miserable just for the sheer joy of it.

Yet when he heard the name, he was more enraged than even I was. Gone was the wry sardonicism, the wit of sarcastic remark. Shadows flashed behind his eyes that I would never understand in ten lifetimes of grief. He told me the Lamberts were bully bastards, chemical heirs grown fat and rich and wicked off the millions left dead in puddles from the thick yellow fog of war. I knew he knew what that fog tasted like, smelled like, felt like as it burned his skin. Rashes on his arms scarred over long ago still shone on mornings where I helped him with the yard.

Soon after that, Horatio stopped spreading rumors, avoided me in the halls of the school, ducked into corners and began a new campaign, silence with a scowl. I asked Alfred about it that afternoon, and in the same dry voice as if I had simply asked him the weather, he said back to me

"well he stopped, and that's what matters."

* * *

_June 4, 1939_

If there is one thing I hate about Gotham City Hall it's the terrace on Gala night. I made my appearance, gave my speech, and waited patiently for the polite hour to pass before Alfred would call me with 'urgent business', a convenient excuse to go home and shower off the stink of nepotism from my skin. With the smoke wafting in the air, caught beneath the veranda it is as if all the corruption that flourished in this place got condensed into a stew, choking you with the atmosphere of ill-gotten gains and indifference. Commissioner Loeb, too round for me to ever conceive of as an actual police officer at any point in his blood soaked path to the top, Mayor Gilpin, who told me when I was providing the new fleet of engines for the Fire Department if I was doing it for a future campaign I'd be praying that those trucks worked. I drive through the streets for hours some nights, crossing into Dexter Hill, the barrier between where the streetlights end but the city still goes on in darkness, and even though I keep getting told the downturn is over, that things are getting better and more people are getting by, I just keep seeing a city in pitch black. Last winter when the apartment building in Dexter Hill caught fire, when nearly the entire block burned as the boys at Engine House 8 played poker instead of responding to calls, Captain Blake told me three words.

"these things happen."

Thirty-Eight people died. Twelve kids. Jackson Harper, 3 years old, was thrown out of a goddamn window from four stories up because his mother would rather hope that he survives the fall than know he died in the fire. John Valencourt had told me all of this over drinks at the Iceberg while nursing the black eye and broken ribs he got the night after he turned in an article about it to the Gazette. Assaulted outside his home by four men with baseball bats, police report lost, article unpublished.

But these things happen.

I saw Blake at the Gala, laughing with Loeb at some joke, I asked what was so funny and he told me about this masked man with his velvet cape, probably some fruit from Johnson Square who likes Errol Flynn a little too much. I laughed along too.

"these things happen."

* * *

_June 8, 1939_

Arnold Lambert is dead.

I picked it up on the radio while out on patrol, and it didn't seem real until I heard the address. I was waiting for a breaking and entry report, or a liquor store robbery in Devil's Bend. But had I just stayed off tonight I would have been next door to what is apparently this morning the "case of the century". Because of course we need another one of those in this town.

It took nearly half an hour to arrive at the scene, by which point the reporters were already flocking to the front gates. I watched from a distance, telescope pointed down at the crowd, the police carrying out a body beneath a white sheet, a fire poker, and finally kicking and raving as though a mad man, Horatio.

His shrieks pierced the night as he muttered out the same words in a jumble of frantic pleas.  
"I'm innocent, don't you hear me? I'm fucking innocent, you have the wrong man. you. have. the wrong. man. My father is fucking dead. Don't do this to me, please. Please god help me, you have to believe me. PLEASE."

The officer behind him gave a whack to the back of his knee, and Horatio collapsed in a sudden yelp as the two officers already at his sides now drug him across the gravel driveway to the squad car where his screams were now muffled by a pane of glass.

According to the paper this morning, the police found him upstairs with his hands covered in blood, Arnold down in the foyer, fireplace poker protruding from his gut. He had bled out, and Horatio had gone upstairs to take a nap, resting off the late-night murder with some much-needed relaxation.

But who had called it in as a homicide? Alfred told me that he was restless that night and did not hear a single thing from less than half an acre away. Horatio certainly didn't, as, if the story is true, he would have been either asleep, or have just murdered his own father, or both. Ours are the only two manors on this private road.

Further, why would Horatio have blood on his hands if he used a tool like a fire iron? What motive would he have to do such a thing when so obviously the culprit? Without once attempting to hide the body, or even attempting to return to his own home now in the Upper Gardens?

As much as it pains me to say it, I don't think Horatio Lambert killed his father. I just need to figure who did.


	2. Chapter 2

_June 9, 1939_

Six hours.  
That's how long it took Gotham P.D. to get a confession from Horatio.

Honestly, a bit long for them, but I guess having a bank account with a couple more zeroes than any of the beat cops can even dream about gave him a little reprieve before the cigarette burn and car battery main supper that counts as justice in this city. While I was still doing non-mask work I got picked up and treated to the full five course meal. Fall of '37, on the eastern side of Dogtown in one of the blocks where Gotham's finest started turning a blind eye after the demographic changed enough to consider the place a 'lost cause'. I wore old clothes from one of the donation drives, tattered rags that seemed to have every imaginable stain of every imaginable bodily fluid washed and dried across them in a menagerie of brown and crusted white. It was a cold October evening, breeze like a rabid dog's bite, even from behind the broken windows of the abandoned house I was using to scout out trouble.

Then ambling down Washington Avenue the slow hover of lights from a white Chrysler Airflow screamed in the silent evening that something terrible was on the edge of boiling over. Washington Avenue is not a street where cars passed through, save for delivery vehicles and the occasional hand-me-down Tin Lizzy some family that spent two years saving up for would wake up without in a few weeks time. Everyone in Gotham with at least two wits about them knows that, and accepts it unconditionally because East Dogtown is not a thoroughfare to anything but a night in a hospital for most folks. No schools, no hospitals, not even a pet shop despite the name. It is a sick, tired, beaten dog of a neighborhood that most people on the "right" side of the city think should be treated just like that- that most people hope will flood with the Delaware one early spring morning, miraculously stopping just at the intersection where Jimmie Dale Elementary teaches the kids who don't have to stay home because their family needs all the help it can get. Some would rather that go in the flood too.

The Airflow just kept crawling across the dirt street, leaving a small cloud of dust in the wake. Glacially this cruise ship in a sea of tragedy kept moving, kept watching, even as the kids playing in the street stopped and parted to ogle the machine in its streamlined shimmering glory ogle them back. It came to an idle stop at the smallest, a kid wearing emerald green suspenders that his mother had obviously picked with love since no other kid on that street would have them. The window rolled down, and before I could think I was out on the street, in front of the cars headlights trying to make out in the shadow the face of the silhouette now glaring back at me in black eyes.

"I'm trying to have a conversation here guy." he said. His voice was muffled by the engine but the agitation was clear. The kid walked back a few steps, and I stared him down for the second or two necessary for him to sprint full force to the other end of the street. The airflow edged closer to me as I steadied myself on its hood.  
"You asshole, I was trying to offer that kid a job and you come out here and scare him off, fucking bum. Get out of the street."

Still silent, I stand. His face becoming more clear as my eyes adjust to the brightness of the headlamp. His sallow skin, like a melted yellow crayon gone dull. His suit, crumpled at all the wrong places in a cheap tailor job that obviously wasn't originally for him. His icy blue eyes, now flashing with hatred as he presses the gas, ever slightly, once more, waiting for me to make a move.

After a minute or two of this, he motioned for me to come to the window, and I complied. He tried to stab me with an ice pick, and I drug him out of the car and wrestled the pick away, stabbing his ankle and twisting the handle in a way that would keep him from driving for a few weeks at least. Opening the trunk there was rope, knives, a white hood, a little 'light reading' in a bundle of pamphlets and notes. I kicked his teeth in as his crawled toward me, but that's when the G.P.D. showed up, for the first and last time I've ever seen them east of Banner Ave.

Beating, burning, electrocution, drowning, a little chokehold here and there. The five courses of any good night after ruthlessly assaulting someone I was told was a 'family man' and refusing to change my story. I escaped before booking, but after giving the name "Joseph Chill", which might be my biggest regret of the night. If this charade keeps going on I should really get better at aliases.

As I sat and read the news, I barely noticed Alfred standing in the door frame, telling me about some detective wanting to ask me a few questions about the murder. What I saw, what I heard, what I was willing to testify about and other nonsense in the fast track for Horatio Lambert to the gas chamber.

I descended the stairs for a quick chat with Charles Van Cleef, a slight man whose nose had been broken just where it wouldn't heal right. He greeted me in the parlor, but kept his eyes on the decor, with the look of a man running the arithmetic of where the smallest and most valuable thing I wouldn't notice missing was.

"Mr. Wayne, I got half a story from your butler, half a story from your secretary, frankly you need to keep your ship a little tighter if you're gonna pretend you were somewhere."

I told him I had no idea what he was talking about, he could have caught my heart beating like a jackrabbit's foot on prairie if he wasn't so busy trying to case the living room.

"Look, I get it, some mistress, some party, it happens. You weren't here last night, right? I don't give a damn where you were, but you weren't here."

"Yeah, I wasn't here, anything catching your fancy over there?" I said as he looked over the mantle of trinkets I hadn't ever bothered to move and had almost forgotten were there. He turned, flustered, his lean-jaw clenched as though I were accusing him, though to be honest I was.

"That's fine then. We have someone from across the street who heard the scream willing to testify. Just need you to clear up a few things."

"Like what?"

"Well for starters, what was the Lambert house like?"

"I don't know, it's sitting empty behind a line of police barricades, why don't you go over and look for yourself?"

He held back either a laugh or a scoff, the instinct of a street cop new to the suit and tie. "Hell, you know what I mean. Your families worked together what, half a century? You've lived door to door from each other for fifteen years. You'd have a better idea than anybody what their whole deal was."

"Plenty happens between those two doors, the Lamberts and I don't really see eye-to-eye, considering."

"Considering you're both rich? Christ, I don't get you people."

"What's not to get?"

"I worked the Trendell case a few years back, you remember Doc Trendell?"

"Hard to forget something like that."

"Jordan Park Townhouse, walk six steps and you're at the neighbors. I counted when I was hauling the eighth to the wagon. Hell, I was one of the first responding to that, just another February night walking the park to make sure no soft face sissies were trying anything in the bushes. I heard the shotgun."

Van Cleef stopped himself, coughing himself forward past those memories.

"He... I mean, you saw the pictures from the damn newshawks in the Gazette. But I guess the point is, I talked to the neighbors, up and down the block. They acted like they didn't remember anything untoward, but made a point that they disliked him. But was it for the twelve boys we found in the basement? His wife and kids? God no. The bad memories they had of the guy... it was about the wallpaper he chose for the dining room, the Romeo he would park on the wrong side of the street... I guess you could say they just didn't see eye-to-eye with the guy."

For a moment silence enveloped the room, a shiver ran down my spine like a cold wind in the heat of the summer. "Look, I just didn't talk to them much." Van Cleef looked at me with that shaking sliver of bravery only a dishonorable man trying his best can know.

"Well, thanks for your time. I think we have enough on Horatio to get him to Madarossa anyways, though between us, the guy's trying for some kind of insanity line."

"I don't know if Arkham is any better than the Glass Cage."

"Maybe come out to the pen and let him know that when he's done screaming."

"Screaming?"

"Last I was down there that's all he was doing. Some line about getting the spiders out of his blood. Convincing, if not more than a little annoying after a couple hours. Hopefully his voice fries out by the time I'm back at the station."

It's been three hours since Van Cleef left me with that, a cold shower of truth from a man who's forte probably isn't honesty. Did I just ignore what was under my nose the whole time? Horatio was a mean bastard, Arnold too. Did it just come to a clash one night? Was Horatio hiding in that hatred something darker in wait? I guess the only thing I know with any degree of certainty is that Horatio wouldn't fake-sick to get sent to the funny farm, at least not the Horatio I know. He would proudly walk into the death chamber without a last meal as long as he thought he looked good in the jumpsuit. I should visit him.

and more importantly, I should really get Alfred and Susan on the same page about where I'm at on any given night.


	3. Chapter 3

_June 10, 1939_

By the time I got to 1010 Central Avenue, whatever scent the lavender and lilac in Centennial Gardens was meant to spread wears thin beneath the smell of grease and exhaust in the early morning. A dried-out brown brick box with a few dried-out brown patches of lawn on either side of the entrance. I was outside counting the cigarette butts in a sea on the polished steps, watching a young street cop lean against the dirty wall, sipping coffee from Fagan's, jumping each time the double doors with their stained glass windows opened, spraying him with blinding color and light for a moment before taking another quick gulp. The kid couldn't have been older than eighteen from the looks of it, his thin neck making the smallest shirt the GPD has look loose and bulky, like a child playing dress-up with dad's work clothes. The baton at his side shone with greasy marks, and his eyes despite the flutter of anxiety were bagged with the fatigue of a boy's first long night. All I could think about is where his patrol went, what he saw.

"Long night?" I ask, shaking a carton of Kessler's. He took one, lit it up with a match from his back pocket.

"Hell, isn't every night a long night?"

"Shorter in the summers."

He chuckled with knowing, with secrets fermenting beneath the surface. In Gotham the summers are all night, especially since the crash. In winter if you're still alive you are too busy trying to keep warm to hustle and maim, learned that by the third year the GPD announced the "Christmas Miracle" of December's murder rate. He kicks aimlessly at the ground, scuffing his already scuffed black shoes that would never really buffer out.

"You're Bruce Wayne right?"

"Yeah, you?"

"Henry Bullock. I'm new... if you can't tell."

"Where's your beat?"

He sighs, "Little Tokyo... place is a damn tinderbox, you know they make their streetlights out of paper, right? I got in a little scrape over there... first fight I've won."

"Having a gun and baton helps, I'm sure."

He thumbs the filter, spreading ash on the steps that glitters in the morning air.

"Sure does. You outside Central for a reason or do you just like chatting with tired cops?"

"I'm waiting for a detective, Lambert case."

Bullock frowned, taking a minute to drag long and hard against the cigarette. "Shit, that whole thing… Ya know if the state doesn't fry him first, I wouldn't mind giving him one between the eyes with how much of a ruckus he's been."

"I heard he was screaming?"

"Is. Still is, if you're quiet you can hear him inside most of the time. Every few hours it stops, but then he meets with his lawyer, meets with the shrink, and the whole stage show starts again for the shift change."

Motioning to the door, I ask the stupidest question I can. "So, Lambert… not screaming right now? I don't hear anything, I want to talk to him, if that's at all possible."

"Without this detective? I'm not sure it's a good idea."

'Not sure', I've found, is code for the naïve few not used to how things work in Gotham yet. Grease the palm, boost the ego, play dumb, and 'not sure' becomes 'definitely can'.

"Well, you know, we're neighbors, I just can't help but feel bad for the guy, I want to make sure he's doing alright, check if he needs anything. Maybe a friendly face is all he needs to stop this sideshow act and get you all the peace and quiet he needs."

The bags under his eyes twitch, fluttering with anticipation for the sleep he'll get while pretending to write his arrest reports. "Maybe, I just… I don't want to get in trouble with anyone higher up the ladder than me."

"Like a millionaire who supplies the entire force with squad cars? You let me in, and I guarantee you trouble will be as distant a memory as street patrols on the graveyard shift."

A moment of pleasant contemplation crosses his face, the half waking daydream of desk-duty with double pay. "Yeah… I guess you're right."

"You know I'm right.", I said, opening the left-hand door as he puts out the cigarette with his heel. I should talk to Loeb about Bullock. Good kid. He'd hate him.

Across an ocean of desks, half filled with stranded and sickly-looking older cops in cheap ties beneath a fog of smoke, I saw him. He had almost the whole drunk-tank to himself, which only begs the question where they were stuffing the drunks- my money being on the utility closet near the entrance. His skin had paled from the bronze tan I had seen last, his suit now reeking with the foul stench of the spring sewage leaks that every Gothamite carries at least one handkerchief in preparation for. His eyes seems to sink back into his skull, casting long dark shadows that almost enveloped the pinkish-white around his pupils. In the two days since the murder I don't think he's slept once.

"Bruce." He said, with disdain so thick it couldn't be cut with a knife.

"Horatio, how're you holding up."

"Well, I'm in jail. I'm probably fired, my wife is probably leaving me, so I'm just peachy. Did you come just to be a damn thorn in my side or are you going to do something for once."

I offer him a cigarette through the bars, he rolls his eyes and takes one, still staring me down with those bloodshot eyes.

"You didn't do it."

He draws, a deep inhale of unstated gratefulness, no emotion, no passion, only savoring the harsh bite of smoke, greedily pulling about a quarter of the cigarette in one puff.

"I don't know… I really just don't know."

"How can you not know?"

"Dr. Mechner, he keeps telling me that people can forget something like that… like your mind makes barriers, makes boundaries of what it will let you see. I want to think I didn't do it, but I just keep remembering that night. In two days I've gotten five sessions with him, and it just feels like something's missing."

"Well, I sure as hell ain't a shrink, but I'd give it a try if you want to tell me what was going on that night."

"Why should I do that?" he asked, grabbing another two cigarettes like a kid stealing from a candy jar.

"Do you have anything else to do?"

Horatio stands at his full height at the cell door, a full head taller than me, with his thick hands clutching the bars right in front of my face. A wince of hatred crosses into a soft whisper as he leans down to face me. Through gritty teeth he tells me the whole story.

"You've always been a smart guy. Figure it out. My father had some company over, they left, we disagreed on a little business matter, I went to my room to calm down, and a couple hours later I wake up to Billy clubs and blood soaking my hands. You tell me, Bruce. Does that sound like I'm an innocent man?"

He leans in closer, hot breath touching my cheek

"Doc says the only reason I can't remember is because deep down, I loved my father. I know that's true. But you? I'd remember every detail. I'd remember everything. It would help me go to sleep at night."

"What's that the bible says about your neighbor?"

He spits, a quick spray of saliva across my face. I wipe it off and see blood on my hands.

"Horatio, I'm here because the detective told me you were acting up, acting crazy."

"Do I look crazy?"

He did, with his suit tattered, his scent bursting through my nostrils like the sharp stab of a men's bathroom in a metro station. Deranged eyes, deranged hair, hoarding cigarettes from me now as if he would never see them again.

"Look, we both know it's a crock."

"You think you know it's a crock." He said, before turning to the window, not to enjoy the view of the alleyway, but to enjoy the view of anything else but me.

"I killed him. There just… isn't any other possibility."

"You know what Arkham is like. For Christ sake, Lambert money paid for half the facilities."

"Guess the old man should have paid a little more."

"All I'm saying is, if you know you did it, why are you trying to get sent there? Madarossa isn't bad, and if you plead down, I'll try my damnedest to make sure you don't get the glass cage. Hell, it could just be a 10-year sentence with the right judge."

The disgust returns in a twitch, he turns, bashing his shoulder against the bars. "You think I'm trying to get sent to the bin? Christ, that doctorate of yours really isn't worth it's weight in shit is it. I ain't a damn loon. It just… it just keeps happening. I just keep remembering flashes of it, every time I see Mechner… he says it will go away with time… I just…"

He stops, dazed, perplexed, punch drunk on his words.

"I'm just so confused…"

Just after that, two men entered, Van Cleef and a man in a bright pink bowtie. The bowtie man with his sleek black hair and tortoise shell glasses sized me up with a scowl.

"Mr. Lambert is not supposed to have visitors."

"Free country, chief. Figured he needed the company"

"Doctor. My name is Doctor Mechner. I would appreciate it if you leave, Mr. Lambert is being well taken care of."

Van Cleef grabs me by the arm and briskly walks me out, half dragging me at a speed closer to a light run. "Mr. Wayne, What happened to meeting me on the steps?"

"Some kid let me in, don't remember his name."

"Look, you're not supposed to be here alone."

I jerk, half sending Van Cleef to the floor as he trips. "Detective… you don't honestly believe Lambert did this, right?"

"He's confessed, and he's just kept confessing to everyone who will hear him out. Hell he probably confessed to you, even though you two don't 'see eye-to-eye'."

"Horatio Lambert is not some Raskolnikov, if he's killed anybody I guarantee you he would rather die than confess."

"So yesterday there was nothing you could tell me about him after fifteen years of living next to each other and after, what, ten minutes of conversation you're his biographer? I'm impressed, Mr. Wayne, what other cogent insights you got from Russian literature?"

"Van Cleef, you need to tell me about Dr. Mechner, I think he's doing something to Lambert."

"I don't need to tell you a goddamn thing. We don't need you any more for this investigation Mr. Wayne. Thank you for your help."

With that he shoved me out of the front doors, landing back first into the steps below. I wheezed, winded, staggering for air as I got up and ran for the door once again. Van Cleef, still standing in the sea of typewriters, turned to push me once more.

"Don't you think it's a little suspicious, Chuck? That every time Mechner is in, Horatio goes into fits?"

"Yeah, it's suspicious as hell that a man charged with a hanging crime would act crazy to the one guy that can give him the crazy stamp out of it."

"Why keep it up? Mechner just saw Lambert talking to me, not screaming, talking. Whatever chance he has of an insanity defense on that chronic trauma shit ain't gonna fly if Mechner is actually doing his job."

"Bruce. Shut your damn trap and get out of the building."

"I will when you watch Mechner."

Van Cleef stared me down, with the same look of hatred I apparently have to get accustomed to in the Centennial South Precinct. "I will watch. I will update you if anything happens, but you need to leave."

With that, I exited to Central avenue, now jammed with traffic in the mad dash of morning. I decided to walk back to the manor, through Centennial garden watching as the birds perched in the oaks lining the promenade. Three miles through Blanchard Heights, through Chichester campus and the quad I called home. I thought about the myth of Gotham, and how much it made me laugh when my mother told me about the merry travelers from England who only wanted enough land to make a stew, which they would share with the natives.

The natives agreed, and the sailors sliced carrot, beef, onion and celery so far that it stretched across the island, one hundred and forty-one square miles for a bowl of soup.

Ours is a city built on crooked deals, on food that rotten into the soil. I just kept thinking about it the whole way home, and by the time I got to the front door I just didn't have the stomach to do anything but rest for tonight's patrol.


	4. Chapter 4

_June 11, 1939_

The thought came to me while I was walking near Fauntleroy Park watching four kids who stole a pack of Slims from their mother's purse light up and wheeze. One fell on the grass below, gasping for air as the smoke hit his lungs. Johnson Square was too hot, Dexter Hill was silent, and I wasn't about to cross the bridge to Stuyvesant and bring the Feds in. So, I was here in West Central, watching the perils of the city's safest neighborhood unfold. I heard the call for a hot prowl on Broadchurch and 48th just ten minutes too late and was barely beaten by the cops. With that it was foot patrol, a dull walk beneath the amber lights of Fauntleroy.

"Oh god, Marty, you good?" one of the boys yelled, half panicked in hesitant jitters back and forth from consoling his friend on the ground and sprinting back home.

The boy on the ground was crying a little, and I figured he'd gotten punishment enough. It was nearing midnight and with nothing else apparent, I was on my way back to the car when it hit me.

If I broke out of prison, I can sure as hell break back in. I had to. Horatio wasn't done talking when Mechner interrupted, and since we hit it off like old pals, save for a strongarm threat behind iron bars, I was certain the camaraderie could keep flowing. With twelve blocks between me and Centennial South I began the drive, silently parking just behind Zucker Deli, which had, after the third broken window in just as many months, installed spiraling grates of black wrought iron. There was a little note stuck between two of the bars, rolled up like a message in a bottle washing against the shore. I thumbed at it, unraveling a scribbled diatribe beneath penciled swastikas.

"JEWISH PERSECUTION ONLY FOLLOWS CHRISTIAN PERSECUTION BY THE JEW, REPENT. – Rev. Walter Wallace"

I folded it into one of my pockets for later. Walter Wallace, reverend or not, must've been a few cards short of a deck to sign his name to the only case of Semitic violence in this town the cops even pretend to give a damn about. Just two blocks cattycorner from Central, police stop in from five in the morning, when the flashing neon sign starts painting the street red, to eleven at night when the door locks and the only lights inside is the candle in front of the photo of the girl. Ruth serves a lot of them free of charge because of the girl in that picture, and in turn GPD actually started investigating until it was clear the glass would just keep shattering. The Zucker's have had enough heartbreak, getting rid of one extra straw on their back is the least I can do.

Running across the back alley, the steam of the summer sewage billowing from the seams of manholes, I almost didn't notice when I got to Central. Almost. I heard a shriek in the darkness, piercingly loud in the near absolute silence. I saw the grated window and began to climb the wall. Inside I saw him alone, writhing on the ground, back arched, twisting his limbs in grotesque spasms as each breath bent through his ribs like a deer collapsed in the snow, waiting for the killing shot.

"Horatio" I whispered at the window, with no luck. He just kept smashing his body back to the ground, flailing, screaming. But then he turned his head, cocked with a crack louder than a thunderbolt. His eyes were red, blood pooling in his cheeks in crusted tears that only looked black in the night. He stops, laying flat now, still as sleep when he makes a sickly tight rictus grin.

"Shinigami, you've come to take me."

"Horatio, I'm here to talk to you."

He crawls, backing up to the door, pressing himself in as he grips at the bars.

"Man should not consort with your kind… thief… blow… weep…" he staggers his breath, eyes wide, tears streaming in tributaries across his cheeks.

"You said to Wayne your father had guests over, who was there?" I demanded in a low gruff voice, hoarse and breaking at the gravelly bottoms. Not intimidating in the slightest, but in this state, it was the best I could up with.

"He… Please… Please don't hurt me." He whispered out, shivering. "I'm just so sorry. I'm so sorry for what I did… He was right…"

"Stop groveling and give me names, tell me what he was right about, tell me anything, I need the truth."

"I don't know anything… I swear… I swear to god… I just want them out… Please get them out of my head." Wimpering he smashed his head into the bars, with the thick thud of bone against metal. He looked sick more than shocked, like he was losing a battle of choking down vomit, heaving with gasps.

"I need something, Lambert. Or I swear I will come in there and take it from you."

With that he puked, sending chunks of black sinewy stomach lining across his dirty white shirt now gray with sweat stains. For a moment, face pale, cheeks sallow with sweat dripping down his chin, he looked at me with relief, with revelation. As if in that moment he finally put things together.

He whispered something I could hardly make out, "Zurenar, that's what you want, what you've always been here for… Shinigami. Take Father, take McElroy, take me… but please… don't take Irene… please… she didn't know.", before falling to the cement floor, the base of his skull shattered, spreading blood across the floor in an expanding pool of darkness. I gripped at the window, watching the lifeless body of Horatio Lambert dance in jolts and spasms on the ground. There was silence once more, stillness, with the only noise the ambience of the street and the whirl of the metallic fan. No guard, no frantic footsteps, no fanfare of sirens or screams. I couldn't tell if the figure in the chair just outside my sight but flung in shadows against the wall was asleep or indifferent, but at that point neither mattered much.

I shrank down to the street and walked dazed and haunted back to the car, wishing the night had just stayed a garden stroll through the park.

* * *

_June 12, 1939_

Horatio Lambert is dead.

That's what Van Cleef came over this morning to tell me, waking me from a long and strange dream to a reality I desperately wished was just that.

"Did he say anything before that? Leave a note?"

"No… Guards found him last night, apparently the guy on watch duty thought he heard someone break in, got up to investigate."

"Break in… to a police station."

"As stupid as it sounds, we had a couple sightings of a guy in a mask scaling the building. Nobody reliable out that late, but still, might be something." He pulls an unlit cigarette he had draped over his ear down into his lips, lighting it as he walks away from me to lean against the stairwell.

"You think he did it?"

"I think he might know something about it, if he exists… I'm fifty-fifty considering the fact that Ralphie isn't necessarily the most diligent guard we've got."

"So… now what?"

"Now the investigation is over. You'll probably have new neighbors you can disagree with." He hesitates, mussing his hair with a sigh.

"You got anywhere I can ash this?"

I hand him the nearest ashtray, and he exhales with a cough. "I… If… I don't know… I'm sorry for jumping at you the other day…"

"Understood." I say back, waiting for the thought that I see forming just behind the eyes.

"He... I mean… Dr. Mechner… he's clean… State, Chichester, been with the city working three days at central and three days at Arkham for the past five years… basically been here since we started using shrinks…"

There was the pause, the hanging end waiting for context. If I wanted the guy's resume I would have offered him a job, Van Cleef knew that, saw the impatience in my eyes.

"But… I did watch him… He gave Lambert something… I guess like a handkerchief, and Lambert just started sniffing it. I asked him what it was, and he told me that it was from Arnold Lamberts suit… But it wasn't… I don't know, it didn't feel right."

"Like how a doctor working six days a week would get a handkerchief from a dead man didn't feel right?"

"Like how we didn't log a handkerchief into evidence and didn't log Mechner taking anything from evidence."

"So… what now?" I ask again, sensing a pattern to the conversation, Van Cleef leaving me with half a story just so he can hear me beg for the other half.

"Now nothing. I don't think I can start investigating this. Department wants it gone. Frankly I want it gone. Suicide is home by dinner, Homicide is new groceries because the last ones rotted in the icebox." With that he shudders, sizing me up for any disgust that might cross my face at the callousness. I can't say I blame him, last year was the first time in a decade the number of murders in the city was under five hundred, and even still I know from his worn out hollow eyes he probably was on a few of the bag men found in the river. He's seen something he sees in the corner of his eyes now, between blinks, between shadows. He just kept looking at it, and now it's with him forever, because that's how a case goes red to black. No need if the case is already black to begin with.

I nod with understanding, more realization that if anything moves forward, I have to do it myself. "Just keep me in the loop." There is a restless beat, the quiet of realization between two men making a raw deal.

"Yeah… I'll let you know what happens."

"Hey, Van Cleef, you ever hear of a Walter Wallace?"

"You haven't?"

"No… I was out last night on a walk and found this… Didn't want some kid finding it." I reached into my pocket to give him the note, which he scans over with disgust and pity.

"This damn clown. Look, Wallace is a nuisance, nobody listens to him but the crazies."

"So he can just leave this stuff wherever he wants?"

"I don't even think he left it. Guy's not exactly ambulatory, if you want to ask him yourself he records out of Rosewater every day, the radio station just off the Walnut street bridge." He mimics holding a microphone with his cigarette. "WKGK, the home of the lord is anywhere his word may reach."

"Charming, but I'd stick with being a gumshoe for the time being."

He chuckles, "Wife tells me I have a face for radio." With that he left, a firm handshake and slumped walk back to the cruiser idling in my driveway.

Alfred drove, I like the company during the day, like the idleness of watching through the passenger window the stone high rises and steel frames of the city.

"Bruce. What do you actually think you'll achieve with this."

"You read the note."

"I'm not talking about the note." He says, deadpan, looking over to me as he turns.

"I don't know what you mean Alfred."

"Just…" he sighed "Just don't get in the kind of trouble I can't get you out of."

The rest of the drive passed in silence as we pulled up to the flat top station. WKGK is smooth sandbrick with a dark iron cross hung atop the entrance, a metal tower above struts into the atmosphere, far above where I can see from the passenger side window.

I asked Alfred to pick me up in an hour, and he agreed with a grunting shrug.

Climbing the steps, I saw the words painted on the door.

"GOD BLESS AMERICA, AND GOD BLESS YOU", signed beneath with a little advertisement for the "Golden Hour with Rev. Walt Wallace."

I entered to an empty lobby where a girl with rosy cheeks sat at a wooden desk.

"Oh howdy! What can I do for you today?" she says with an unforced cheerful smile that told me everything I needed to know.

"I am Bruce Thomas Wayne, here to speak with the reverend"

"Oh! Oh my! Mr. Wayne, I'll try to get him right away."

She got up from the desk, walking down a long hallway back. I was curious about what her job actually was, considering the only thing on the table was a stack of books with the words "The American Struggle" on the spine. I decided to look through the drawers while she was gone, not my business but curiosity got the better of me. Not my business that the top drawer had an automatic Wayne .22 hidden under a cheque, nor that the bottom drawer only had more copies of "The American Struggle" and a box of ammunition. Curiosity uncovers many a curious thing.

By the time she came back she was followed by a man on two crutches.

"Mr. Wayne, sir." She says meekly, parting the way and he leans himself down to hold out a hand.

"Bruce Wayne" he says, smiling behind dark glasses. "It is an honor and a blessing to meet you."

"It is an honor to meet you Reverend." I limply shake his hand, half afraid I'm going to send him to the polished tile floor.

"Please… Walt." He says with a false modesty hidden under a light southern drawl he's obviously practiced for years. "Follow me, I'd love to show you my office."

I follow him, ambling down the hallway for what feels like an eternity. He occasionally moves his knees forward, gaining a few steps before dragging his legs behind him once again, propped up only by the metal crutches at his sides.

"The thing about friendly fire Mr. Wayne… it ain't friendly at all."

"You served?"

"You know it. The 'Great War'" he laughs, "ain't nothing great about it."

By the time we get to his office, I've already noticed through the glass window the crosses he has adorned seemingly at random across the walls. The only décor to distract from the half dozen file cabinets overflowing with papers.

"Mr. Wallace, I'm here because I'm worried."

"Well, what's on your mind?" he leans in, "these are troubling times."

"I found a note… I think it's linked to a series of vandalisms"

He sighs, "Oh my, that is terrible. This city is plagued by degenerates who would do anything to defy gods will, what can I do to soothe your soul?"

"well… you can explain why you signed it."

In a moment the act changes, his posture, leaning forwards to me, draws back, distances, the wave of distrust washing against his face.

"I didn't sign anything."

I hand him the note, and he looks over it and laughs.

"I don't know where you found this, but I can assure you this is not my handwriting, nor my teaching."

"Well, tell me what it is then."

"I don't know, some hooligans who listen to my show, they take what I say too…"

He searches for the word.

"literally?"

"Well, not literally. I want them to take me literally as I am speaking the literal word of god. But they take that word and use it wrong, act when they should think, think when they should act."

"Doesn't look like a whole lot of thinking to me."

He smiles an insincere smile back at me, "Not from whoever wrote this, I'm sure. The swastika is wrong too."

"That's not what I'm concerned about."

"Then you are not concerned about the right thing, Mr. Wayne."

He quarter turned his head, readying to call the girl from the front desk. Quickly I blurted out "Well, what are the right things I should be concerned about?"

"You know what you should be concerned about. Not all of us have been so fortunate in their game." He said quietly hiding his hands as if I hadn't already noticed the gold rings he wore on every finger. "They want to keep us down, control us, teach our children lies and loosen our moral code so we will always be beneath them."

"Who?"

He just smiles at me. "Wayne… that's a fine English name you have there… Christian. You are blessed as are the many against the few damned races who want to collect power in the hands of a chosen few. But you play their game. The bankers, the businessmen. They crashed the economy to keep us down, and introduced to us a "new deal" on their terms, just to tax us more and more as we earn less and less."

"Sounds like a grand theory."

"You ever wonder why this city is falling apart? Take a look at them, really take a look. They started the war that let the blacks infest our neighborhoods with crime and disease. They caused the war that I lost both my legs in, and for what? Money and power. I will defend my words, they can cry about it all they want, but I will defend them forevermore. We have been under them for too long, and it's our turn to fight back."

"So you hire people to break windows?"

He chuckles, a rotten laugh of pity "I don't hire nobody 'cept Lauren at the desk and a few engineers here and there."

He sits calmly rested back, impatient but without anxiety or fear. I look over to his desk, the microphone and typewriter positioned neatly across from one another for any other revelation he may have about this grand conspiracy.

"Mr. Wayne, unless you're here to become a sponsor, I really do need to get back to my work."

"No, I'm not here for that."

He swivels in his chair with a scoff, tired of this farce as he looks over his notes on a sermon it looks like he titled "The Menace"

"Shame. This last week has been hard on the station."

"Has it?"

"You heard about Arnold Lambert, right? He was one of our greatest supporters… a good man."

I stood there for a beat, taking in the weight of each word as Lauren walked me out, giving me one of the books, already signed by Wallace, a parting gift as I stumble out to the front steps in the burning noon sun. It takes Alfred forty minutes to get to me, but even with the delay it took me a minute to notice the horn honking as I stood on the sidewalk dumbfounded.


	5. Chapter 5

_June 14_, _1939_

It was about three o'clock in the afternoon when the zeppelin passed over Wayne Tower. A sideways skyscraper of hot air ambling across the sky, the _Ludendorff _cast the entire Riverside district in a blanket of shadow for nearly an hour before disappearing into the clouds over the rolling green foothills of Stuyvesant. As if the first one wasn't garish enough, flying to fanfare in Jersey as the "cruise liner of the skies", the new one is cherry red with black eagles on either side, like a bloated sportscar silently burning out its first gear suspended midair.

I was in my office, a drab, morose little palace wide enough to fit a bus. On the wall farthest from my desk the original Wayne Towncar draft was framed, coffee stains and all. I find myself staring at it more and more these last few weeks, idly phasing out of the sea of documents for approval, the ocean of engineers and executives coming to me with gripes and hesitations in a revolving door of melodrama punctuated by the to-market blowouts with kegs and champagne at the beginning of the fiscal quarter.

When I started drafting the '35 I didn't know a fiscal quarter from a fiscal dime. I just knew that I didn't want the legacy of Wayne ingenuity to be the electric razor we spent nearly a decade in R&D and marketing on as our newest product in "home luxury". Bicycles, Artillery and Firearms. The only things the Wayne family could ever really call themselves pioneers in. Two of those are designed to kill people, the third just happens to occasionally. I wanted to make something new, something designed to save, and with a majority stock I put concept to page and page to bare metal. Plus, easiest way to research for a doctoral thesis on car safety is to make the world's safest car. Win-win.

I just keep thinking about that first shipment of Nylon for the seatbelts. After months of preparation, research, mechanical failure after material failure I got that little box heavier than a bowling ball dipped in cement. The thing was full of thick nylon sheets direct from Lambert Chemical with the little note attached "Good luck neighbor."

That was the time I felt free, felt like it meant a good goddamn what I was doing. That was the time I knew what was going on, wasn't just stumbling blind, clumsily handling half-truths that now taint that time for me.

Arnold was always a quiet man, solemn, soft-spoken, nothing like his son. Was that really the same man who would just as soon donate to the asylum as he would to reverend Wallace's little racket?

I had the radio quietly humming gospel from WKGK in the background as I looked over the awful names I paid marketing to come up with for me for the '40 line. "Wanderer", "Wayfarer", "Photon", the like. A staff of half a dozen college educated men without a single shred of common sense between them. That's the last thought I had before that southern drawl came back for another 'Golden Hour' of talk, this time with less input on my end.

Wallace's voice was tinny with nasally diction ringing loud and clear at low volume. If the reverend weren't so upstanding a member of his community, I'm sure he could order a double at the Iceberg from outside and get top notch service without paying them a cent either. He has that way about him, speech so fast it could run the Kentucky derby, coming to slow and solemn beats in a steady rhythm of speed in flux. It was like listening to an opera, emotion overwhelming him as he comes to a furious end of verse or quote, drilling the message into your mind as he repeats, "We are living in uncertain times, ladies and gentlemen. We are living in uncertain times".

I almost didn't notice the knock on my door, the skinny woman in stubby heels wearing a black dress, blonde hair curled and parted so it flowed casually out of her wide-brim black hat entering before I had the chance to get up to get the door, or even get my tie back on.

She paused as she sat, wordless, looking at me with a squint of suspicion like I was the one barging in on her.

"Of all the people in Gotham who listen to Wallace, I wouldn't have expected you, Mr. Wayne."

"Why not?"

"Well for one thing, you have all your teeth."

Funny girl, though she didn't look it in the getup she had clearly bought in the last few days. I didn't know her, but I knew who she was. The soft brahmin accent, the softer blue eyes. She was Horatio Lamberts widow, Helen Lambert, though that name probably bought less in this town by now than a wooden nickel.

"What can I do for you ma'am."

"Please, Helen. Ma'am makes me feel like an old maid."

"Alright Helen, what can I do for you?"

She reached in her handbag, a vivid green thing with golden lace that screams against the mourning black in the kind of carefree luxury that would look gaudy in any other city. She smoked slims, pulling a half-crumpled pack from the bag, I was ruffling through my pockets to get my lighter when she brought out a gilded steel one with diamonds around "blue" in engraved calligraphy.

"Well, you can start with what exactly my husband said to you right before he bashed his brains in."

"Well, miss. That's a bit of a loaded question."

"All chambers on you, Mr. Wayne." She says, pointing at me to fire an invisible round from the tip of her finger.

"The way I see it, I'm going to be feeding you a line either way. You want me to tell you he was crying, saying he was thinking of you right to the end? I can do that, because that's what he was saying, but something in the way you came waltzing in here says you're not in for a sob session … that or you've got the oddest way of grieving I've seen this side of the Delaware."

She smirks, "Philanthropist, engineer, comedian, tell me how do you make the time?"

"Well it's all very taxing, the comedy is the only one I can do tax-free."

"Are we just going to back-and-forth like this until we end up at the Iceberg a few drinks in, or are you going to be straight with me."

"I didn't know I was being anything but."

She flicked her cigarette at me, ash scattering across my table in a way that I only half hope will light the drivel busywork up with it. Before I can muster the energy to pretend to be upset, she tensely glared at me telling me all I needed to do was sit back and listen.

"Don't play coy. You were there, you talked to him, I have good reason to believe my husband was murdered I only want to know what he told you so I can get the facts straight."

"Well, who would want to kill your husband?"

"I would, but by process of elimination I've already ruled myself out as the killer." She said in a half fleeting voice of exasperation and regret, though I couldn't tell for sure if it was regret for wanting to kill him or not killing him in the first place.

"Why? If you don't mind my asking."

She pulled a small vial from her purse, sniffing the contents with a sickly gag of phlegm at the end. As she had her eyes closed, tapping her fingers against her lap, she started in on gripes and grievances.

"He's a drunk, he's a sham, he's probably been cheating on me, he's a crook, he gambles, he drinks…"

"You've mentioned that."

She stopped, looking me dead in the eyes. "He's a murderer, that's one I haven't mentioned."

"You think Horatio killed?"

"Well, I know he has before."

"Before Arnold Lambert."

"Yes… well, no… Well…" she paused, trying to think of what to say.

"Do you think he killed Arnold?"

"He certainly wasn't a fan of daddy."

"I'm not a fan of George Selkirk but I'm not going to ice the guy."

"He and Arnold… they had disagreements about just about everything… but no, my husband was a bad man but not… not that." She said as she lit another cigarette, her hands shaking with a palsied fury. "Arnold was right about him, you know. He said Horatio was a cruel little boy, and you know what those boys grow up to be?"

"Millionaires."

"Cruel little men."

"What's the difference." I said, getting a little agitated with the performance.

"Mr. Wayne. My husband, the bastard that he was, wasn't the kind of man who would play crazy and kick the bucket the moment things weren't going his way. I think a man named Ernest McElroy is involved."

"Not familiar."

"Ernest is the new man at the top of Lambert Chemical, he and Arnie were peas in a pod, but a few nights before the murder Horatio told me that he saw Ernest and Mr. Lambert in the Zugaikotsu Longue…"

"Why was Horatio in Little Tokyo? Why would the Elder Lambert be there? You think this might have been connected to the whole 'your husband sleeping around' thing, a convenient excuse to stay out?"

At this she flicks her cigarette at me again, this time landing in my lap. As I brush it off she looks at me with disgust

"You don't know a damn thing about that so I suggest you don't bring it up. Horatio does business there, or did anyways. Scamming, hustling, two-bit pimping, he had some kind of gangster fantasy that only a few neighborhoods in this city let him live in relative secrecy. But Arnie and Ernest? Horatio didn't have a clue why they would go there, and frankly I don't either, but whatever reasons there were, they couldn't have been good. Not there."

"So, did he tell you what they were arguing about?"

"No. But it's a little convenient that the two people who were in the way of him being at the top die right after he's seen in a rift with one of them that could have ended his whole career."

"Well, seems like an open-shut case, Helen. All that coincidence is definitely admissible evidence, and to answer your question, no, I've never heard that name. Like I said, Horatio just wanted to tell me he was thinking of you."

She squinted at me, sour look crossing her face as she got up and left without even saying goodbye. I, Bruce Wayne, don't want a damn thing to do with this. This is old news, something that will pass under the thick blanket of the city's tragedies, just like mom and dad, just like the Prybenski case, just like Maria Zucker. It's a black hole, the kind of dark that tricks you with lights flashing against your eyes as you try to adjust but can't, the kind of dark that you see in the drain of the sink, watching, waiting with a sick longing in the early morning for something to pop out just to feel like it's not just emptiness inside.

But me, the real me. I need to investigate this.

And I need to tell the Marketing guys I hate all of their fucking name choices.


End file.
